The Week Ahead: June 7 to 13

Nerd Nite is like a series of TED talks for the geek set, with topics ranging from quantum physics to comic books, discussed by experts at select community watering holes and hipster lounges. The phenomenon began in 2003 in Boston and has spread to more than 80 cities worldwide—including our humble Boca Raton. The monthly series usually gathers guest speakers around a certain theme, and June’s is the world of fantasy. Tamarlane, a so-called “real-life supervillain,” will discuss real and fictional arch-villains throughout our history and culture; Athena Finger (pictured), the granddaughter of the unsung co-creator of Batman, will discuss her family legacy; and Carlo Sabusap and Anthony Farese will discuss “Cosplay: A Creation Culture.” There also will be a trivia set. Everything’s free, but the drinks, of course, are on you.

This longtime Polynesian cultural bonanza was primed to say its “Final Aloha” in 2014 until a pair of businesspeople made founder Christie “Tiki Kiliki” White an offer she couldn’t refuse. And so it lives on, in a new waterfront host hotel, in what will be its 15th anniversary bash. Sip exotic cocktails, admire tiki statues and mingle with friendly celebrants of vintage South Pacific culture, while enjoying a characteristically stellar live music lineup that includes Los Angeles’ Tikiyaki Orchestra, which marries classic exotica with jazz, surf and spaghetti western melodies; Jason Lee and the R.I.P. Tides, a San Diego three-piece influenced by ska, first-wave surf music and biker flicks; The Intoxicators, a Tallahassee trio famed for its guitar-driven instrumentals; and the Disasternauts, a space-age, jet-setting super-group whose members don chimp costumes. Also, don’t miss Jeff Chouinard’s live tiki carvings, Marina the Fire-eating Mermaid’s submersed performance art, Angie Pontani’s globally acclaimed burlesque performances, and the symposia on everything from DIY art to “Tiki Style” to American tattooing.

Self-taught Japanese-born artist Hiromi Moneyhun does more with an X-ACTO knife than many artists could do with the best digital art software on the planet. She pays homage to the paper-cut illustrations of her childhood by creating impossibly rich and meticulous wall hangings, carved from black canson paper that resembles metal. A few of Moneyhun’s stark creations were showcased at the Cornell Museum’s “Paper as Art” exhibition last year, and now she’s back for a full gallery show at the Morikami. “She was drawing from the nature around her, and she got hooked on this moth motif,” says Morikami Chief Curator Tamara Joy, of Moneyhun’s evolution. “She liked the metamorphosis analogy that you could explore with the idea of the moth. She began to explore women in different cultures who also undergo transformations.” The focus of this exhibition is some of those women, the elaborately dressed courtesans of the 19th century entertainment districts of Tokyo and Osaka—which Joy calls the “floating world of transience, fleeting pleasures and the illusions of the sentient life.”

Not since Billy Bragg has an artist married folk, punk and alternative rock as successfully as Frank Turner, an English singer-songwriter with a six-album corpus of plaintive confessionals, rousing barnburners and joyous tributes to a life in melody and verse. Turner is only 34, but his records convey the hard-bitten wisdom of an older musician. As he sand on his 2008 breakthrough hit “Photosynthesis,” “Well I guess I should confess that I am starting to get old/All the latest music fads all passed me by and left me cold/All the kids are talking slang I won’t pretend to understand/All my friends are getting married, mortgages and pension plans.” Turner, however, has had none of it, continuing to pound the pavement, touring endlessly to his increasingly devout fanbase. Show up on time to this performance, his first since 2013, because Turner is the opening act. He’ll take the stage before headliners Gogel Bordello.

Considering his successful track record at Art Basel Miami Beach, it’s about time this slyly subversive Los Angelino artist received a solo museum exhibition in South Florida. Parker, an imaginative self-proclaimed “one-man machine” who works in paint, sculpture, pen and ink, installation and video, produced a 4-foot-by-4-foot wooden tree house called “My First Kiss”—complete with stepladder and hatching cocoons—for Basel 2015. The year before, his “Contender” series subverted self-portraiture in the age of the selfie. In “Everything Counts in Small Amounts,” he’ll revisit his fascination with communal, intimately scaled structures, from tree houses to flower shops to quilts, that explore themes of friendship and memory. Friday also marks the opening reception for the Center’s “Carmen Tiffany: The Teeth Beneath” and “Aurora Molina: Selfie.” All the shows run through Aug. 21.

The creators of “Legally Blonde: The Musical” and “Reefer Madness” collaborated on this 2014 adaptation of “Heathers,” the ahead-of-its-time cult satire about the dangers of high school cliques. The “Heathers,” if you’ll recall from the film, are the popular mean girls, all named Heather, who rule their school, until a new initiate teams up with a rebellious new guy to disrupt the status quo—with the help of drain cleaner and a drive for vigilante justice. A cast of nearly 20—playing parts such as “Young Republicanette” and “Beleaguered Geek”—makes this take-no-prisoners dark comedy one of Slow Burn’s most ambitious productions to date. It runs through June 26.

To some extent, every author has followed the time-honored edict to “write what you know.” For Brad Meltzer, a South Florida resident, history buff and scribe of many a snappy thriller, his latest novel The House of Secrets feels especially personal: One of the most important characters is the host of a conspiracy television show. It’s impossible to consider this character, Jack Nash, without picturing Meltzer himself during his tenure as the host ofDecoded, where his cadre of sleuths analyzed conspiracies involving Bohemian Grove, UFOs, Fort Knox and much more. Let’s hope art doesn’t imitate life, because Jack Nash is an early victim in The House of Secrets, leaving his daughter Hazel to piece together his murder—a journey that hinges on a book stuffed in the corpse of Benedict Arnold. Meltzer will discuss and sign copies of the book, which hits stores (including Books & Books) June 7 for $28.

Join our list

Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.

By submitting your email, you understand that JES Media may send you email communications and that you may unsubscribe from these email communications at any time. If you have any questions, please review our privacy policy.